Taking the Heat

The press, it is clear from the filibuster coverage, loves moderates.

The same can't be said of the blogosphere.

In the Old Media portrayal, McCain and the Gang of 14 (how did new members slip in there after we'd all decided on the Gang of 12?) are principled mavericks who care deeply about the institution of the Senate and are willing to risk their careers and buck their parties to preserve it.

But to bloggers on the left and right, the Mod Squad is comprised of finks, scoundrels and sellouts.

The talk in Washington had been that it would be hard for the two sides to cut a deal because both Democrats and Republicans are under strong pressure from their interest groups. And some of those strong feelings are being vented online in the wake of Monday night's squishy compromise.

Being denounced by right-wingers and left-wingers, respectively, does tend to burnish one's reputation as a thoughtful man (or woman) of the middle. But does that reputation mean anything in an age of polarized politics?

"The fate of the agreement defusing the Capitol Hill confrontation over judicial nominations now rests as much in the hands of President Bush as the senators who crafted it," says the Los Angeles Times. "The dramatic deal reached Monday night by a bipartisan group of 14 senators forestalled a showdown over a GOP effort to ban the filibuster for judicial nominations. It produced immediate results today when the Senate swept away a filibuster preventing a final vote on Priscilla R. Owen, a long-stalled Bush nominee to the federal court of appeals now expected to win confirmation Wednesday...

"But the deal, in which seven Republicans agreed to oppose the filibuster ban while seven Democrats agreed to use the procedural tool against judges only in 'extraordinary circumstances,' could prove short-lived if future court nominations provoke the same partisan conflicts as the judges now under dispute."

In other words, this could wind up being a classic Senate fudge that buys time.

National Review's Andrew McCarthy says the Republicans got squat:

"Let's say the signatory senators had not bothered to write up the kumbaya agreement with all those pretty phrases about 'mutual trust and confidence' and 'good faith' and 'spirit and continuing commitments' (gossamer, if ever there was, rivaled only by 'should only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances' in the depth of its meaninglessness).

"Let's say, instead, that they simply gave us the bottom line: (a) three of the president's nominees get an up-or-down vote (i.e., exactly three of the pending seven left standing after the Democrats -- in that spirit of compromise -- whittled down from the original ten); (b) the Democrats remain free to filibuster (but only on the strict condition that, uh, well, that the Democrats feel like filibustering); and (c) the Republicans, on the brink of breaking four years of obstruction, decide instead to punt (and on the eve of a likely battle over a Supreme Court vacancy, no less).